1. Believers are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.
2. Rational judgements repeat rational judgements.
3. Irrational judgements lead to new experience.
4. Formal faith is essentially rational.
5. Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically.
6. If the believer changes their mind in the course of creating their faith, they compromise the result and repeats the effects achieved in the past.
7. The believer’s will is secondary to the process of initiation to completion of the faith. The believer’s wilfulness may only be an expression of their ego.
8. When words such as liturgy and ritual are used, they connote the whole tradition and imply the consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the believer who would be reluctant to acquire the faith that goes beyond the limitations.
9. The religion and faith are different. The religion implies a general direction while the faith is the component. The faith implements the religion.
10. Ideas can be expressions of faith; they are in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical.
11. Ideas do not necessarily proceed in logical order. They may set one off in unexpected directions, but an idea must necessarily be completed in the mind before the next one is formed.
12. For each act of faith that becomes physical, there are many variations that do not.
13. An act of faith may be understood as a conductor from the believer’s mind to God. But it may never reach God or it may never leave the believer’s mind.
14. The words of one believer to another may induce an idea chain if they share the same concept or idea.
15. Since no expression of faith is intrinsically superior to another, the believer may equally use any form of faith, from an expression of words (written or spoken) to physical reality.
16. If words are used, and they proceed from ideas about faith, then they are merely faith and not religion; the same a numbers are not mathematics.
17. All ideas are faith if they are concerned with faith and fall within the conventions of faith.
18. One usually tries to understand the religion of the past by applying the convention of the present, thus misunderstanding the religion of the past.
19. The conventions of the religion are altered by the expressions of faith.
20. Successful faith changes our understanding of the conventions by altering our perceptions.
21. Perception of ideas leads to new ideas.
22. The believer cannot imagine their faith, and cannot perceive it until it is complete.
23. The believer may misperceive the faith (understand it differently from another believer) but still be set off their own chain of thought by that misconstrual.
24. Perception is subjective.
25. The believer may not necessarily understand their own faith. Their faith is neither better nor worse than that of others.
26. A believer may perceive the faith of others better than their own.
27. The concept of religion may involve the matter of the faith or the process in which it is made.
28. Once the ides of the faith is established in the believer’s mind and the final form is decided, the process is carried out blindly. There are many side effects that the believer cannot imagine. These may be used as ideas for the new expressions of faith.
29. The process is mechanical and should not be tampered with. It should run its course.
30. There are many elements involved in the faith. The most important are the most obvious.
31. If a believer uses the same approach in multiple expressions of faith and changes the approach applied, one would assume that the believer’s intent involved the approach.
32. Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution.
33. It is difficult to bungle a good idea.
34. When a believer learns to believe too much, they create a superficial faith.
35. These sentences comment on faith, yet are not faith.
Petr Dub
(Prague, 2020)
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Original text by Sol LeWitt…
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